Summer's Child

“We might as well go to bed,” Bonnie said.

  “Oh, God, Bonnie.” Grace couldn’t bear the thought of going to bed. When she woke up, she would only have a few hours left of her freedom. She would finally have to face the uncertainty of her future, and that of her baby. “I don’t want to go home tomorrow.”

  “I do,” Bonnie said. “No offense. But I want to see Curt. And I bet the weather has been better in Charlottesville than it’s been here.”

  “You don’t have to hide a bowling ball under your shirt when you go home, though,” Grace said.

  “My mother would have known a long time ago,” Bonnie said. “She pays way too much attention to me.”

  Grace glanced away from her friend. Bonnie’s words were spoken as a complaint, but she didn’t appreciate how good she had it. Grace shifted on the couch, trying to find a position that would make her stomach more comfortable. Maybe lying down would help.

  “Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Her sleep was fitful. She’d closed her bedroom window against the rain, but the glass rattled in its frame, and despite the storm raging outside, the room was hot, her sheets damp with perspiration. Even while asleep, she was aware of the pain. She dreamed she was in the hospital room, having the baby, and she was screaming. She screamed herself awake, and knew at once that she was truly in labor. This pain was not a dream.

  Bonnie rushed to her side. “Grace? What’s the matter?”

  The room was pitch-black. Bonnie’s voice cut through the darkness, but Grace had no idea which direction it had come from. “I think the baby’s coming.” She managed to get the words out between explosions of pain. She let herself scream, throwing all of her breath and energy behind the sound, understanding now why women in labor felt that compulsion. No other sound would do.

  “It can’t be coming,” Bonnie said, and Grace heard the panic in her voice.

  Grace could not respond with words, only with gasping breaths and yet another howl of pain.

  “I’ll get the lantern,” Bonnie said. “Wait here.” Then she laughed. “Like, where else would you go?”

  In a moment, she returned to the room with the burning lantern, which she set on the old dresser, and Grace could see how frightened she was. She imagined her own face held that same look of terror.

  “I don’t know what to do, Grace,” Bonnie said, waving her hands feebly in the air. “Tell me what to do.”

  Grace felt helpless. What was happening to her had a life of its own, and she was completely unable to stop it. She looked at Bonnie, wordlessly pleading with her to take over.

  “The nurse!” Bonnie said suddenly. “Nancy!” Bonnie ran out of the room, ignoring Grace’s plea not to leave her.

  She screamed in Bonnie’s absence, screamed and screamed just to keep her mind off the raging pain in her body and the fact that she was alone. She was still screaming when Nancy and Bonnie rushed back into the room.

  Nancy gave Bonnie instructions Grace could not make out, and Bonnie left the room. Nancy uttered words of comfort as she moved around, as if nothing unusual were occurring, and Grace suddenly felt enveloped by the nurse’s calming presence. She was only vaguely aware of Nancy rearranging the bedclothes and holding the lantern between Grace’s legs as she examined her. Nancy’s movements, her entire demeanor, were confident and unhurried.

  Placing the lantern back on the dresser, Nancy sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to tell you how to breathe,” she said to Grace, her voice soft and even. “It will help with the pain.” Grace was aware that Bonnie was in the room again, and she glanced at her friend’s face only long enough to know that she was crying. Fear always induced tears in Bonnie. Grace had seen it happen before.

  She struggled to follow Nancy’s instructions to breathe, calmly and slowly one moment, panting the next.

  “Squeeze my hand when you have to,” Nancy said, slipping her hand into Grace’s. Grace clutched at her fingers.

  “Now listen to me, Grace,” Nancy said, leaning close to her. “Surely you now realize you can’t keep this baby. You know that, right? You’re simply too young to raise a baby by yourself, especially without the support of the baby’s father or your own mother. You don’t even know where you’re going to live. You’ll have to leave here tomorrow morning with a newborn baby in your arms and no diapers, no clothing, no formula and no knowledge of how to take care of it. Be honest with me, can you take this baby home to your mother?”

  Grace let out a wail at the thought.

  “She can’t,” Bonnie agreed. “You don’t know her mother.”

  “I know you’ve had a fantasy of keeping this baby,” Nancy said. “But it was a fantasy, just that. I can help you, though. Let me take the baby. Let me take it to the hospital where I work. I’ll get the baby checked out and make sure it’s healthy and then I’ll arrange to have it adopted by a good family. That way, no one, not even your mother, will ever have to know that you were pregnant. You, me, Bonnie and Nathan. We’re the only ones to know. And it can stay that way.”

  “She’s right,” Bonnie said. “I’m scared, Grace. I mean, it was one thing when you were just pregnant. But any minute there is going to be a baby here. Another life! You’ve got to let Nancy take it.”

  A boulder of pain pressed down on her stomach, and Grace screamed again. Her mind filled with jagged shards of thought. She could see her mother’s face, yelling at her, forcing her to tell her how this pregnancy had happened. She could see Bonnie and herself tomorrow, struggling to keep a newborn alive. Oh, God, what if her selfishness caused the baby harm? Suddenly, through the veil of pain and terror, her idea to have the baby and keep it seemed unspeakably selfish, almost cruel.

  She squeezed Nancy’s hand with both of hers. “Would you call me? If you take the baby, would you let me know that it’s all right? That it’s been adopted…by somebody wonderful? Promise me you’d only let it go to somebody wonderful who could give it everything.” Her voice broke and she clutched Nancy’s hand even harder.

  “Absolutely, Grace,” Nancy said. “I’d do all of that. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. Just turn the baby over to me and I’ll take care of it.”

  “This is like a miracle, isn’t it, Grace?” Bonnie asked. “I mean, you happened to go into labor a whole month early, but a nurse just happens to live next door, and she knows exactly what to do and she can find a good home for the baby. You have to do it, Grace. This is obviously the way it’s supposed to be.”

  She writhed on the bed with a fresh wave of pain. The storm pummeled the window above her head. Thunder cracked in her ears and lightning lit up the room with an eerie, unearthly pulse of flight. Let me out of this nightmare. She’d wanted this baby so badly, now she just wanted to be free of it. Get it out of her body. Make the pain stop. Let Nancy take it away, safe and unharmed with a future better than any she could hope to give it.

  “Yes,” she wailed. “Please take it, Nancy. Please make this be over!”

  The baby girl was born at four-fifteen in the morning, when the ferocity of the storm had dissipated, and Grace had reached the end of her own strength and will to fight. Through a fog, she heard the cries of her baby, and she stretched out her arms into the darkness toward the sound.

  “Let me see her, Nancy,” she said weakly.

  “No, no,” Nancy said. “Trust me, Grace. It will be easier for you if you don’t see her.”

  “She’s right,” Bonnie’s voice came from somewhere beside her. “It might be harder for you to give it up…give her up…if you see her.”

  She was too tired to fight, and she let herself be lulled into sleep by the release from pain and the peace and quiet that had finally come to settle outside her window.

  It was nine-thirty when Grace opened her eyes the following morning, and the night came back to her like a bad dream. She felt the dampness on the bed beneath her bottom, and reached down to touch the towel Nancy, or perhaps Bonnie, had folded beneath he
r. She’d had her baby. She’d given it to Nancy. That had been the right thing to do; Nancy could take good care of the baby. But there was no reason why Nancy had to find it a permanent home. The baby could stay in a foster home! As soon as Grace got up on her feet again, as soon as she had a place to live and a job, she could take the baby back. All her desperate fears of the night before seemed out of proportion to the situation now.

  “Bonnie?” she called out.

  Bonnie came into the room, deep bags under her blue eyes. “You’re awake!” she said. “How are you feeling? Are you terribly sore?”

  Grace raised herself to her elbows. “I want to see my baby,” she said.

  “You can’t, Grace,” Bonnie said. “Remember what Nancy said? It’ll just make it harder for you if you see it.”

  “Not it,” Grace said. “Her. And I’ve thought about what I said last night. What I agreed to. I don’t want her to have the baby adopted out. I was feeling crazy last night. If Nancy could find a foster home or something until I can figure out what to do, then I can take the baby.”

  “Oh, Grace, you’re still not thinking clearly.” Bonnie sat down on the bed. “You have to do what’s best for the baby. And also, what’s best for you. You haven’t even ever had a boyfriend, Grace. You haven’t even gotten to live. I’ve always thought it was crazy that you were going to tie yourself down with a baby, but I knew that was what you wanted, so I went along with it. But this is such a perfect solution. The baby will be fine. She’ll have a better life than she would have with you—you have to admit it. And then you can get on with your own life.”

  It bothered her that Bonnie could not understand. “You weren’t pregnant with this baby for eight months,” she said, starting to cry. “You didn’t carry her around right beneath your heart. You didn’t feel her moving around inside you. You talk about the baby like she’s some…nuisance, or something. She’s my child. I may not be able to give her every single toy she sees or dress her in perfect, matching little outfits, but I’m going to give her so much love and attention that she’s never going to feel deprived of anything.”

  Bonnie sighed tiredly. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Go next door and ask Nancy to bring the baby over so I can finally see her, and then I can talk to her about how I can get the baby into foster care while I’m getting on my feet.”

  “All right,” her friend said, standing up. “Remember, we have to get out of here by one. And we don’t have a thing to eat, so after I get Nancy, I’m going to go to the store and get some bread and some sanitary napkins for you. Nancy said you’d need them.”

  “Okay, but bring the baby over first, please?”

  “Okay.”

  Grace got out of bed, slowly, after Bonnie left the cottage. She cleaned herself up in the bathroom, and she was horrified to see several bloodied towels in the wastebasket. They would have to remember to get rid of them before they left. She improvised a sanitary pad for herself out of a washcloth and got dressed. She couldn’t wait to see her baby.

  She walked out of the bathroom to find Bonnie in the doorway of the bedroom. Her face was white.

  “They’re gone,” Bonnie said.

  “Who?” Grace asked, although she was afraid she knew the answer.

  “Nancy and Nathan,” Bonnie said. “The cottage is deserted. Their car and suitcases and everything are gone.”

  Struck instantly by an overwhelming grief, Grace sat down on the bed. Her mind raced. “I don’t even know their last name. Do you?” she asked.

  Bonnie shook her head. “I don’t think they ever told us,” she said.

  “Oh, God, Bonnie. My baby. They took my baby.” She began to cry, and Bonnie moved to the bed and put her arms around her.

  “I know. I’m sorry. But she’ll be all right. I’m sure they left early so they could get to the hospital to make sure the baby was fine and healthy. Nancy seems like a really good nurse to me. She’s going to make sure everything’s perfect for your baby.”

  “But I’ll never get to see her!”

  Bonnie was crying, too. “I shouldn’t have agreed with Nancy last night,” she said. “I didn’t realize you’d change your mind, though. It seemed to make such good sense.”

  Grace cried for a long time in Bonnie’s arms. Then, finally, she looked down at the pillow on her bed. It was inviting. She lay down, facing the wall, and pulled the covers over her head. She felt Bonnie’s hand on her back and closed her eyes.

  “I’m going to the store,” Bonnie said. “I’ll get you the pads. Is there anything else you want? Soup or anything?”

  Grace didn’t bother to answer. She’d barely heard the question.

  47

  “MY GOD, GRACE,” EDDIE SAID. HE WAS SITTING NEXT TO HER on the sofa, having moved there sometime while she was speaking. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”

  “It was something I was trying to forget,” Grace said.

  “So…I’m trying to understand. Was it Pam’s death that made you start thinking about this other baby? Realizing that somewhere out there you had a child living with her adoptive parents? And I still don’t get it—the part about Rory Taylor. What’s going on between the two of you?”

  So many questions, so much he still didn’t know. “I haven’t told you everything yet,” Grace said. God, she hated saying all of this out loud. She’d gone over it in her own mind too many times to count, and, of course, she and Bonnie had revisited the experience over the years, but to recite it this way gave it a terrible credibility. “Bonnie went to the store that morning,” she said, “and when she came back, she was very quiet. I thought maybe she just felt guilty about her role in getting me to give the baby to Nancy. She tried to get me to eat something, but I just couldn’t. I’d never felt so despondent. I wanted to die.” She looked at Eddie. “It was the same as I felt after Pamela died.”

  Eddie covered her hand with his, and she didn’t pull away. “Me, too,” he said. The two words cut through her. She had given him no comfort, no sympathy after Pamela died. Only blame and recriminations.

  “Bonnie finally started talking,” she said. “She told me that when she was in the little market, everyone was talking about a newborn baby girl that had been found on the beach very early that morning.”

  “Oh no.” Eddie tightened his grip on her hand.

  “The store clerk told Bonnie the baby had been found dead. When Bonnie told me that—” Grace shut her eyes at the memory “—I was torn apart, Eddie. I’d wanted that baby. I’d been willing to turn my life inside out for her. But I thought the nurse might be right, and I’d trusted her. And she went and left my baby on the beach to be washed away like a piece of driftwood.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Eddie said. “How awful.”

  “So, Bonnie called me early this summer and said that she’d found out that Rory Taylor wanted to do an episode on his True Life Stories show about that baby. He was going to look into how she came to be on the beach that morning.”

  “So, you contacted him and told him you thought you were the mother?” Eddie asked.

  “No,” Grace said, horrified by the thought. “I didn’t dare do that. I…manipulated a meeting with him to try to find out what he knew. And what I found out was…the baby had not died. A little girl found her, and her family adopted her. And now she lives in the house right across from the house where Rory Taylor is staying. She lives with her sister. She had some brain damage from that night. It’s mild, but she really does need someone to look out for her. Her sister seems to have done a good job of that.”

  Eddie stood up and began to pace, something he always did when he was upset. “This is unbelievable,” he said. “Who knows that the girl is your daughter? Have you gotten to meet her? Talk with her? Have you told—”

  She held up a hand to interrupt him. “I don’t know, with one hundred percent certainty, that she is my daughter. It seems crazy that in the middle of a storm, the nurse would take her out to the beach,
but—”

  “How many babies could have been born that night in Kill Devil Hills?” Eddie asked.

  “I know, I know. I just can’t make myself tell her, though, Eddie. What if I’m wrong?”

  “Does she look like you?”

  “Not really. She’s very blond, but then, so was her father.” She said the word father as though it tasted bad in her mouth. It did. “But she’s tall and slender, just like me. Just like Pamela was. And she has seizures, Eddie.”

  “Marfan.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. And to make matters worse, now she’s pregnant. She’s pregnant, she doesn’t know she has Marfan’s syndrome, her child might have it, it might go undiagnosed, and—”

  “You’re being tortured by this.” Eddie sat next to her and took her hand again. He touched her cheek. “I wish you could have told me what was going on with you this summer. I would have been there for you, Grace.”

  “I know,” Grace said. “I was too angry with you.”

  “I loved Pamela, too, you know.”

  “I know you did,” she admitted. “As much as I did. And you didn’t know she was sick, just like I didn’t know it. She loved flying—I can’t deny that. You might have encouraged her to do it more than I would have liked, but it was her choice. You only gave her that choice.”

  Eddie lowered his head, and she knew he was struggling for composure. “Thanks for saying that,” he said. He leaned back against the sofa. “The girl,” he said. “What’s her name?”

  “Shelly.”

  “Shelly. If you truly believe Shelly is your daughter, and if she and her unborn baby are…at risk, then you have to tell her. Or, at least tell her sister so she can get her evaluated and started on any treatment she might need. You have to do that, Grace.”

  “But what if she’s not my child?” Grace asked. “She’s a bit fragile. I don’t want to confuse her.”

  “Does Shelly have a widow’s peak?” Eddie asked.

  Grace shook her head.

  “Don’t all the women in your family have one?”